I've been working on a little project that's an IDE controller & TOS 2.06 upgrade for the STFM & STE. So, I wondered if there's any interest in it.

Basically it has the following features.....

* IDE Controller with two ports, one primary which is Atari compatible and bootable. The second is compatible, but not bootable. Therefore providing 4 IDE devices.* TOS 2.06 address decoder, with external pins for ROM's (or ROM upgrade board)* Primary & Secondary ports are switchable. Consider this, you boot from your primary drive, but it becomes corrupt. You flick a switch to your backup drive on the second port, and now it becomes the primary port and kazam your back in business.* Possibility to stack the board, therefore offering upto 8 IDE devices (still testing this one)* HDDriver support for both primary & secondary ports. (Already talked to Uwe about supporting, and he's currently giving me some beta versions for test).* Possibility to go into the STE - currently with adapter - shown. Later it's possible to switch out the 68000 DIP socket for this directly. (Just tested with STE motherboard I got from Chandler )* Finally, it's all done with Logic chips. A challenge I set myself to fiddle with stuff . Therefore easily solderable for those who have the skills, and no programmable chips are involved, obviously if it's just the bare board.

Currently the two 40 pin IDE connectors are vertical. I'm considering mounting the primary (the one closest to the edge of the board) at 90 degrees, so the CF card would be horizontal in the shots.

The photos show where I'm at and these are prototypes so there's been some slight modifications to these boards.

Feel free to send comments

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So I'd be interested in your opinion of the orientation of the board, given the board is currently about 85mm x 75mm.

The STE version could also come with a 68000 DIL socket for other upgrades for people with rehoused STE's, but I want to know from people with cased STE's on their preference of orientation given the above size of the board.

[quote="Shredder11"]I've always wondered what model or maker did my internal IDE interface inside one of my 4160 STE machines. Any ideas Alan? All I know is that it works really well and is very fast indeed.

Thanks for those pics Shredder11 !

I can certainly fit the board in the STE but it will probably be slightly bigger than that one. I'll try and show some pics of what I'm thinking......

i think the decoded address counter will run asso you can mount any lingo 2.x or multiple lingos on the same chips ...same thing as pperas posels flash tos pity nobody seems sees how sideways ram works using a redundant address cycleor you can overload a simm and load from it in real time...

nice project like it lots!!!

if you add 4MB Dram simm you can even shuffle tos versions by changing the dram org...and using 1MB system blocks setting the bounds... as needed in directives first

simonsunnyboy wrote:Please note than an STE version won't need the TOS 2.06 decoder. Any STE can mount TOS 2.06 directly on board. IIRC only a jumper has to be changed if slightly different EEPROMs are used.

My STE had 40pin sockets, but 28pin 1.62 ROMs were fit. I found a pair of 40pin TOS 2.06 ROMS which fit without changing the jumper, but there were also other 40pin ROMS which requires the jumper.

simonsunnyboy wrote:Please note than an STE version won't need the TOS 2.06 decoder. Any STE can mount TOS 2.06 directly on board. IIRC only a jumper has to be changed if slightly different EEPROMs are used.

It's not always a jumper, certainly on my board it has resistors soldered directly into the pads. Additionally, my TOS 1.62 chips are soldered to the board too. So it's not a straight forward swap for those without skills.

And regardless, the decoder is a small part of the logic that can be disabled.

simonsunnyboy wrote:Please note than an STE version won't need the TOS 2.06 decoder. Any STE can mount TOS 2.06 directly on board. IIRC only a jumper has to be changed if slightly different EEPROMs are used.

It's not always a jumper, certainly on my board it has resistors soldered directly into the pads. Additionally, my TOS 1.62 chips are soldered to the board too. So it's not a straight forward swap for those without skills.

And regardless, the decoder is a small part of the logic that can be disabled.

Ah yes, mine too has resistors for jumpers; I don't think there are any Ataris with actual plastic jumpers.

alanh wrote:It's not always a jumper, certainly on my board it has resistors soldered directly into the pads.

Yeah, they were not resistors but zero ohm links but sometimes called jumpers. Every STe I've had has required these zero ohm links removed and a jumper header soldered on for the type of EPROMs I had lying around.